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No one at 35th & Shields has any sort of grasp on how much excitement would be injected into the veins of Sox fans with the news Jerry won't be owning the team anymore. It will be a glorious day, whenever that comes.

My brother in christ you are in the wrong thread.

No sane owner would move a team out of Chicago. It was always a false flag

Ishbia is not a wait around and wait kind of guy. He has always wanted to own a baseball team. He had every intent on purchasing the Twins but JR approached him with a deal to purchase the Sox and he changed course and took it. He lives and works in Chicago. I predict he will be the new White Sox owner much sooner than later.

I would welcome discussions about particular concerns over particular players! I want nothing more than to actually talk about guys' pitch mixes and whether they will play in the majors, or if a hitter needs to make swing changes and how that's working out. A single spring appearance is not informative of anyone's ultimate career trajectory, but it definitely can add to an existing portfolio of concerns. My issue is that rather than contextualizing the singular performance (ex. "Iriarte lost his command in his second inning") or even the broader concern (ex. "Iriarte might not make it be a starter if he can't stay in the zone"), folks will immediately extrapolate to "Iriarte will never be a starter, everyone on the roster is atrocious, the White Sox may never win again." The White Sox suck. Cool. I'm not "gaslighting" you about that. I'm just interested in what the problems actually are (and maybe how/if they can fix it) instead of responding to every inning of spring training with "Sox suck" like it's news. It's lazy and uninteresting and leaves no room for actual conversation.

From the guy building a Chicagoland house worth more than the most expensive contract in Chicago history? The guy who had a company with a Chicago HQ? You have more confidence that he is going to move the team, than he is going to try to spend to win at a rate appreciably ahead of the current ownership structure? I don't know what a German soccer club, the NHL, or the NFL have to do with that, but I will flat out say there is more vision for what an Ishiba led ownership group would look like than say a Dave Stewart one, or frankly any other owner we have no history from.

Do we have to do this thing where we pretend not to understand that process > results in spring? Process: Colson punishes a low fastball. Result: Inning ending out for a hitless day. Which piece is more predictive? You can have a bad process and get bad results, like the 2024 Sox. You can also have a good process and still get bad results, like the Dodgers 1-4 spring record this year. The Rockies had a .586 win% in spring last year, and then had a 101 loss season. The process is the informative piece rather than the record itself. The Sox being bad at both doesn't magically make the record matter. I don't care about Cactus League standings, I care about the process improving. But of course, everyone here knows that already, because none of you would be infused with optimism by a bunch of spring wins driven by errors from opposing AA defenders or lighting up camp invite reclamation projects (though, of course, when OUR #96 filler from the backfields gets lit up, it's totally predictive of the season to come...) Judge the process. Or don't, I admit that it's a pain with inconsistent broadcasts and data. But then also don't be a spring training box score watcher declaring that you know they'll be bad because Colson went 0-3 and a pitcher working on a new FB shape gave up contact that got misplayed into runs by a MiLB deal guy who won't make the team. So much server space here is wasted performatively complaining about silly fake things when there are actual real things to complain about and it makes it so discouraging to try to have actual baseball conversations.

He also cut the price of hot dogs, soda and popcorn to $2 with the Suns, so if you take your kid to the game and they get hungry, you don't need your banker to tag along.

Ishiba…end thread

He’s not shitting on fans for being angry, but the takes are fucking wild in these threads. The overreactions to every single plate appearance is hilarious. Same for the worries on velocity of guys still ramping up. And then debating whether spring training W-L records are predictive of regular season success…I don’t care if we win every game from here on out, our team is going to be terrible this year. We don’t need to a three game sample to confirm that for us. I will never tell fans not to be pissed off because everyone should be, but I don’t think there is anything wrong with a poster asking us to be a little bit smarter on what we complain about. And don’t get me wrong, I can be a total meatball at times and am not trying to suggest I’m better than anyone here, but Autumn is a really good poster who is just trying to bring better conversation to the board.

Starting to feel like this historically bad team may still be historically bad

I, for one, am excited for this 0-4 start to spring training to continue and for the team to continue to get blown out by 8 plus runs.

He'd be a much worse business owner than I assumed he is if he does.

She, for the record. And I guess I will never for the life of me understand why, if you know they're all bad and it doesn't matter what they're working on anyway, anyone would bother tuning in to a radio/gameday feed of a Justin Anderson inning vs. the Rockies in February in the first place? Like I'm tuning in to ST because I do think it matters what the players relevant for the future are working on, but there's literally no room to have that conversation. Until his velo is down a tick or he gives up an RBI to Machado and we're back to the same sky is falling song and dance. But yeah, clearly my point is being lost here so I'll just drop it. Waste of time. Sox suck, woo!

See, now there’s something to looking forward to.

No. It really doesn't add up with what we know about them.

I'm not "shitting on people who are pissed off." Let's just be pissed off at the 101 actual real things worth being pissed off about! This is the problem with discussion here. If you're not pissed off 100% of the time at 100% of things that happen, you're accused of water carrying for the org or saying there's nothing worth being pissed about. There's a ton! So talk about that, and not the freaking Cactus League standings.

Seven months till the season is over.

I am literally 100% confident that if the Sox acquired Canario and he continued to be what he has been, there'd be no shortage of complaints about how the Sox have learned nothing about falling in love with guys with limited contact skills, and how "typical White Sox" it is to give up on [whoever they DFA'd/traded] for a 30 hit tool profile, and how every other team passed on him for a reason and "only the Sox" would be stupid enough to give something up for him. Did the same thing last spring with guys like Peyton Burdick and Canaan Smith-Njigba who oscillated between being stupid to claim/not claim based almost entirely upon the assumption that whatever the Sox did was "obviously" wrong, as if players like these aren't running through a new team's waiver wire every week in spring for a reason.

I'll say this, we get an Ishbia announcement on Friday and I'll buy a season ticket package that day.

The White Sox were the worst team of all time, completely devoid of position talent and upside, so we probably don't want to compare ourselves to anyone else.

I actually think the Sox are that rare exception that defies the spring training record is meaningless rule. They are just that bad.

Getz has literally gone out and added three veteran OFs to block Fletcher. It’s clear where he stands in the org…not trading for a prospect with huge contact issues and no options remaining in Canario doesn’t change that. And as we just saw, not a single club was willing to give up more than cash for Canario. Writing off Vargas right now would be the definition of insanity. Right or wrong, our scouts liked him just a half year ago and he performed incredibly well in the minors last season. At 25 years of age and with his strength issues hopefully behind him, he’s still got a chance to turn it around. And unlike with Fletcher, Vargas has elite plate discipline and a supposedly plus hit tool. We didn’t really see the latter last year, but it’s what drove top 40 prospect ranking. I can get being concerned about him playing 3B (or 2B & OF for that matter) as defense has always been a concern with him, but not giving him three or four months to prove himself with the bat would be just be dumb.

Can’t thank the governor enough for treating Jerry like dirt last year

He was pretty quiet during the last one as I recall.

Woah there Diddy

Getting 2 wins out of RF next year would be a 4 win improvement vs. 2024. I am all for playing young guys where possible, but you can’t force the issue by inserting a guy you don’t believe in into the lineup. Just being “young” is not justification to be given playing time.

This team is so far away from being good again that everyone with any value at all that isn't one of your top prospects should be traded as soon as it presents itself. Yes, I will gladly watch Natrini and Clevinger if it means Davis Martin brought back something that will be useful in a few years.

UNSUBSCRIBE

Canario is a K machine, not sure anyone in this organization can fix that. Would have been fun to try, but I'm not losing sleep over it.

Feel like Martin could turn himself into a nice little trade chip with a strong first half. Lots of cheap team control.

Those other prospects don’t require 26 man roster spots. If you don’t believe in Canario, then you don’t trade for him and create more roster problems.

Yea, but he is buff

3U/3D for Iriate's first inning with 1K. 11/15 for strikes.

Getz has to justify his trades. That means Vargas starting and Fletcher still having life. Fletcher is terrible and it’s obvious the Sox don’t like Colas but he is afraid to cut either one to add a 24 year old outfielder with power in Canario? It doesn’t make much sense.

Will he spend money on players who will produce positive WAR? Because our current owner doesn't even do that.

Ramos and Rojas must love the Vargas news. "He sucks there, but by god...we're gonna prove it was a good move!"

No, not even close. As @ptatc said JR had very little if any influence during the last labor dispute. Furthermore, owners like Cohen have entered the game lately that flat out do not agree with the old school "fiscal discipline" (whatever that means) message that JR is always spouting. The game has changed with more ways to spend productively as well: international area operations in LA and Asia, signing ready made regulars and stars from Korea and Japan, big analytics departments and "sports science" operations. A lot of teams want to spend money to make money, or if not make money, at least field a competitive team.

Yeah it was an incredibly bad look for the Sox when the news dropped that he was buying the Twins

This move to make Ishbia the heir to the throne, kills 2 birds with one stone. It sets JR up with a filfty rich buyer, and it keeps him away from a division rival. He buys the Twins and starts spending and winning right away, the White Sox look even worse.

Greenberg was on the score talking about this yesterday if anyone wants to hear him talk about it

https://patch.com/illinois/winnetka/billionaires-winnetka-home-be-most-expensive-illinois-history His house in Winnetka cost more than any Sox contract ever.

I'd be pretty surprised if Luis Robert is moved prior to opening day

AJ and I are on the same page with the Cubs. There might not be a bigger con artist in baseball than the Ricketts ownership group crying poor with like $50 million a season in ON book profits.

The bright side is that after last year, the Sox don't have much of an audience to lose.

The last rebuild didn’t even yield a DH 💀

I am not thrilled with the Vargas news. Dude is a DH. Rojas is only a 2-3 WAR player if you maximize his glove at 3b. Sox do everything possible to make sure their defense sucks every year.

Hearing from a manager that is not Pedro Grifol. The talent is not there, and the W-L record will be ugly, but I think Venable will end up being a nice palate cleanse from Grifol.